#Stanley90sreno week 6 update: tackling the kitchen! And blinds

11.21.2016

This was a big week!! We made huge progress on the kitchen update but there's still lots to do so hopefully this coming week will be a big one, too!

We set a goal of having all our dishes unpacked and new sink hooked up by Thanksgiving so we could cook our dishes to contribute to the family meal. An ambitious goal, but... we do well with deadlines. ;)

We set this schedule for our cabinet-painting, sink and countertop-replacing phase of the project. We'll do the painting of the walls, new backsplash, vent hood, and other improvements as soon as we can but really want to get our dishes put away in the new cabinets as soon as possible. I had only unpacked a few things, so getting everything out of the kitchen was easiest at this point!

Here was our schedule, and we pretty much stuck to it!

Wednesday: 7-9pm

Put all dishes in dining room

Remove hinges from doors

Clean mold/water damage

Clean all cabinet doors

Thursday: 7-9pm

Remove faucet

Remove sink

Remove countertops

Wood filler in any holes/seams

Sand all cabinet surfaces/doors to be painted

Clean/wipe all cabinets/doors down

Prime all cabinets/doors

Saturday: Full day

Investigate behind cabinets

Paint cabinets/door backs first coat

Paint cabinets/door backs second coat

Prep sink installation

Prep garbage disposal, dishwasher installation

Thankfully there was no black mold on the wall behind the sink, but we did have some funky damaged drywall and almost-rotting cabinet pieces. My dad helped with sink install prep and advised Jason on building a frame for our sink.

I picked out the paint color (appreciate your thoughts on my IG post!!)!!!!! and painted the cabinet backs. I'm going to do a whole post about how we're painting our oak cabinets and how it's a bit of a surprise to me to be going with black on the bottom ones, after my years of yearning for a white kitchen!! But I'm really happy with it so far!

Sunday: Full day

Sand cabinets/door backs with fine grit

Install countertops

Install sink

Install faucet

Paint door fronts first coat

Paint door fronts second coat

Jason got familiar with the plumbing for the new sink and after several hardware store trips and lots of messing with things... we had all the right parts, but realized we needed a new garbage disposal becasue the plastic liner of the old one was curling up and stuff was caught under it (disgusting and not functional). I have learned a lot about garbage disposals this weekend!

SO grateful he has been learning about plumbing and doens't hate it.

We also don't have the countertops yet, so we didn't even try to get that part done. The sink and dishwasher are the most critical items at this point! Ooh, and I just realized, now that the cabinet frames are painted I can unload the dishes into them so the dining table will be partially cleared and I can use it for food prep! Hooray.

Monday: 7-9pm

Install new hardware/doors

That's the goal. We will not be installing the new handles yet since I'm still choosing them. I loooove these traditional-looking ones (especially the 6" or 8" long one, which they were out of) but they don't look right on the flat-front cabinets, and the cool modern one sticks out too much. I think I have my eye on another one that will work!

Also this weekend... I also installed this perfect bamboo blind in our living room! It's from Steve's Blinds and Wallpaper (best prices I've found, custom blinds!) and I got them for the dining room, kitchen, and family room as well. The living room window was the priority since it's huge and faces the street, and now that we're living here we're self-conscious about the perfect view it gives into the house. We had a big piece of paint-covered cardboard covering most of it for several weeks, real classy. SO excited to get this up!

I shared what it looks like in an IG story, I'll take better photos in the daylight!

We have a few more things to get done in the kitchen this week, plus a few more doors to install, and of course some more exciting things like installing the new blinds and a ceiling fan we just bought. (Plenty to do while we wait for the flooring to arrive hopefully later this month!)